Full Citation
Title: Early Fertility Decline in the United States: Tests of Alternative Hypothesis Using New Complete Count Microdata and Enhanced County-Level Data
Citation Type: Book, Section
Publication Year: 2021
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Abstract: The US fertility transition in the nineteenth century is unusual. Not only did it start from a very high fertility level and very early in the nation's development, but it also took place long before the nation's mortality transition, industrialization, and urbanization. This paper assembles new county-level, household-level, and individual-level data, including new complete-count IPUMS microdata databases of the 1830-1880 censuses, to evaluate different theories for the nineteenth-century American fertility transition. We construct cross-sectional models of net fertility for currently-married white couples in census years 1830-1880 and test the results with a subset of couples linked between 1850-1860, 1860-1870, and 1870-1880 censuses. We find evidence of marital fertility control consistent with hypotheses as early as 1830. The results indicate support for several different but complimentary theories of the early US fertility decline, including the land availability, conventional structuralist, ideational, child demand/quality-quantity tradeoff, and life cycle savings theories.
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Authors: Hacker, J. David; Haines, R., Michael; Jaremski, Matthew
Editors: Hanes, Christopher; Wolcott, Susan
Pages: 89-122
Volume Title: Research in Economic History
Publisher: Emerald Publishing Limited
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Volume: 37
Edition:
Data Collections: IPUMS USA - Ancestry Full Count Data
Topics: Fertility and Mortality
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